


To Be Human

by melody_fox



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, I don't know what else to put here, Languages are hard, a little of both, super powers are hard to control
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-06-29 05:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19823179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melody_fox/pseuds/melody_fox
Summary: Kara's multiple struggles as she learns to fit in with the humans of Earth.Kara has to learn how to be human.





	1. Language Is A Social Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kara Zor-El lands on Earth and must learn English in order to blend in with the populous

It’s so frustrating. On Krypton, Kara was smart. She could talk her parents’ ears off about everything from calculus to genetic enhancement. Here, she can barely figure out what others are saying, let alone respond correctly in their language.

Kryptonese makes sense to Kara. One hundred and eighteen letters and a structured pronunciation system. English is confusing. There are only twenty-six letters but they each could make so many different sounds and the combinations seemed endless.

Eliza spends hours everyday helping her learn the alphabet, pointing to things around the house and stating their names, having Kara repeat it back to her again and again until Kara gets it right. It’s exhausting. It’s slow, and Kara can’t see an end in sight.

Sometimes, while Alex is away at school, Kara just sits in their shared room, closes her eyes, and pretends she’s back on Krypton. When she gets her hands on drawing instruments, she draws Krypton and scenes from the other twelve planets she’s visited. As she hangs them on the wall, she feels a little more at home.

Alex is cold and reserved. She snickers when Kara says something wrong, and gives her a funny look when Kara—so frustrated with the language barrier that she’s nearly crying—says something in Kryptonese.

Kara learns why later.

“I just wish I could learn languages as easily as you can.”

Kara tells her in much fewer words that she wishes she still had her parents and planet like Alex does.

They don’t bring up that subject again for years.

***

Alex is nicer to Kara after that. She helps Kara with writing, reading, and pronunciation. Alex does still laugh a little when Kara does something wrong or different, but it’s less mocking and more humorous now. Kara learns to laugh along with her.

In return, Kara tutors Alex in Kryptonese. Even though her people are all dead, that doesn’t mean her language has to be. Clark got Alex started originally, when she was a lot younger and he was around more. She has a solid foundation in the pronunciation, and Kara is just excited that someone else can speak her language.

Alex speaks with Clark’s Earth accent though. Kara can never bring herself to tell either of them how much it helps her to hear her own language again, or how much it hurts that it will never sound the same.

“Okay, read this aloud.”

Alex is better this time, but once the translation sinks in, she playfully slaps Kara on the shoulder. “That’s not true! You picked that on purpose!”

“You should have looked at your face!” Kara laughs. 

Alex is laughing along with her. “It’s ‘you should see your face’, Kara. ‘Looked’ is past test, ‘see’ is present tense.”

“Oh, right. You should see your face.”

“Good! Correct. Now, stop making fun of me in your language, it’s very hard to understand. If you’re going to insult me, do it in my language so I can insult you back.”

***

Trips to the library and around town become regular outings. Alex excitedly shows Kara all her favorite books. Kara latches onto the ones with pictures first, because the context of the photos help her so much with cementing the words and their uses in her brain. Comic books and superheroes quickly become her favorites. Seeing others with powers like hers makes her feel less alone, less different. 

The Superman comics are her favorite, and when Clark comes to visit, Kara excitedly show him her favorite pictures from each issue. 

When James Olsen takes the famous photo of Superman flying across the Metropolis sky, Clark stops by to give Kara an issue.

Years later, she still has it tucked away in her apartment in National City.

***

Out of all the places Alex takes her, Kara likes the beach best. It is by far the most foreign place, but the most relaxing. The warmth and the sun energize her body, and the waves calm her mind.

Frigid, barren Krypton did not have anything more than ice to harvest for water. 

“On Krypton, we did not have big water places.”

“They’re called oceans, Kara.”

“Ohshuns?”

“Yeah, you’ll get it eventually.”

Kara says something entirely in Kryptonian, and Alex can't stop smiling because _she actually understood all of that_.

“You know what,” Alex laughs, “You’re totally right.”

***

After a year, Kara finally feels comfortable with going to school with Alex. There, she can learn more about the history of this planet as well as the ins and outs of the language, this time from observing instead of direct teaching. 

The kids make fun of her accent. She barely understands what most of them are saying, but she gets the sentiment. With her thick Kryptonian accent, she must sound so strange to them. It hurts to know she’s being laughed at, but Kara uses it as incentive. She spends the rest of high school practicing with Alex, doing her best to get rid of her accent. Kara gets good enough that people may still ask where she’s from, but now her best answer isn’t “another planet.” At least now she sounds human.

***

Being forced to learn another language has made Kara rather determined to know all of them. This new planet of hers has so many to choose from, and one by one, she learns about them. And it’s less about becoming fluent in them (there’s far more than she could possibly get around to) and more about understanding these aliens she’s living with. 

Somehow, she finds herself applying to work at CatCo, as assistant to Cat Grant. Part of her simply wants to be helpful, and the other part wants to see a true master of using language and communication at work. And boy did she find one.

Cat Grant is extremely careful with her words, and Kara loves to watch her banter with others, the sentences like arrows shot across a battlefield (she likes it a lot less when she’s the one words are thrown at).

***

Supergirl has to be very careful with both what she does and what she says; Kara learns that very quickly. Her first interview with Cat Grant does not go very well.

“Nobody ever asks my cousin these questions.”

The smile Cat gives her can only be described as cheshire. “Superman is your cousin?”

Oh, Rao help her. 

“This interview is over.”

***

“You told her what?!” Alex yells at Kara over the phone not even five minutes after the information goes public.

“I’m sorry, it just slipped out!” 

“ _Oh, I am gonna have your head for this_!”

“Bye Alex, gotta go!”

“Don’t you _dare_ hang up on—“ 

***

“Winn, would you write a eulogy for me? Make it lovely.”

“Wha— are you dying??”

“I will. Soon. Alex is planning to murder me as we speak.”

"If you promise to teach me Kryptonian, I'll do the whole thing in Kryptonian."

"Deal."

***

The first time she gets published, Kara cries. She never thought she’d actually understand this language well enough to be not only fluent and proficient but considered so by her peers, her boss, and the public.

Alex brings over enough potstickers for a party of eight and they binge watch all their favorite movies long into the night.

Kara isn’t and never will be human, but right now, she doesn’t seem to notice.

She’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out of my own frustrations with learning another language. I personally think it’s lazy writing to just say “she absorbed the language in the Phantom Zone” or whatever it is. I know Melissa Benoist can do a Russian accent, so why not give her a Kryptonian accent or something? Make it subtle and unplaceable, a little like Gal Gadot’s gorgeous Israeli accent in Wonder Woman. I refuse to believe that Kara came to Earth, learned English and does not have at least a hint of an accent.
> 
> Also, there’s like zero information about Kryptonese as a language, so anything I say in here about it is merely my own personal head canon and what makes sense to me at this time. I’m learning German right now and the gendered nouns and articles are driving me nuts.
> 
> EDIT: Sidenote, what do y'all think of the new suit that just dropped???? Fricken Pants???? Hekc yeah man, i'm hyyyypedd. Also, the bangs are growing on me.
> 
> YEET another EDit: so, my friends who have read Steve Roger's Syndrome do not worry, i am still going to get back to it, i just had this idea and i wanted to get it started. if you know me at all, i can't consistently do just one thing, i have to have like 50 different things going all at the same time and i just switch through the tabs in my brain and like four of them are playing music all at the same time, so it's very confusing.
> 
> don't worry, imma get it done
> 
> thanks for reading!


	2. Strength of a Hundred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Super powers aren't all that awesome.
> 
> Kara struggles to learn how to be a super-powered Kryptonian. Several things get broken along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyooo I'm back. It's been a hot minute.
> 
> So, hope you like the update. For those of you who have read Steve Roger's Syndrome, don't worry, I will get back to it eventually. I gotta reconcile some plot points in my head, cause honestly I threw a lot of canon out the window for that one. It's gonna take a while, but I'm determined to finish.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy this one.

When Kara wakes up in the pod, Kal is pulling the top off and reaching in to help her out. That is her first physical interaction with another being, the first in twenty-four years. Kal offers her his hand, and Kara doesn’t think about how much pressure she puts into it, and it’s not until a few minutes later that she realizes just how different her life will be from now on.

Clark remembers it being the tightest anyone had ever grabbed his hand.

Kara is taken to the Danvers house, Clark having called them the minute after he pulled her from the pod, and she somehow manages to break several things all within 5 minutes of being in their home.

The chair she was told to sit down on lies in splinters on the floor.

The bowl of hot soup she had been given lies shattered on the table, steaming liquid dripping from her fingers.

Kara is terrified to touch anything, too afraid she might hurt someone.

This goes on for weeks. Eliza is at her wits end, Jeremiah keeps calling Clark, and Alex keeps hiding her favorite things around the house, hoping Kara will leave them alone.

Kara cries herself to sleep every night, and the blanket she wraps herself in is always in tatters come morning.

Clark has no useful advice because he grew up in control of his strength. He’s always had it. He was super-human. Kara was super-Kryptonian. These powers are new, and she never asked for them.

When they finally talk about it, Kal says there’s no difference.

Kara knows exactly what the difference is, but she doesn’t want to say it. She’s still mourning the baby she was sent to protect. She is Kara Zor-El, and he was supposed to be Kal-El, but he is Clark Kent. Kal is dead, and Clark is here in his place with her uncle’s face, her grandfather’s hair, and her aunt’s smile. And the El eyes. It hurts to look at him sometimes.

She hates him for leaving her with the Danvers, and yet is glad she doesn’t have to see him everyday, to hear his horrible accent as he tries to speak their—no, _her_ native tongue.

The only thing they share now is DNA. Not culture, not language, not childhood, not ideals, not mentality. Clark is not and _never_ will be Kal-El _and that hurts so much._ He is more human that Kryptonian, and when Kara realizes that, she knows her culture is truly gone. She was supposed to pass it on to Kal, to raise him like she had been, and now she’s too late.

The truth hurts.

****

Slowly, Kara starts to learn just how much strength and pressure she should put into everything she does, everything she touches. There are fewer accidents, but Kara is constantly treading on eggshells, and every day is a struggle.

When Streaky comes along, things move a bit more quickly. This small cat somehow changes everything Kara has been doing up until this point. She thinks less about how careful she has to be and does.

Years pass and things start to become normal. Kara doesn’t think about her strength, but it’s always there. Sometimes there’s still mistakes, but at least she doesn’t start randomly flying when she forgets to keep her feet on the ground.

That happened too often growing up.

Then the plane almost crashes, Alex almost dies and everything changes.

Power that Kara hasn’t used or even really thought about in years is suddenly there, right at her finger tips, begging to be used and she does. Oh, she does.

It’s amazing at first. She flies faster than the speed of sound, she held up a plane and now she’s taking down aliens with far more experience than she has like a pro. Alex beams with pride whenever Kara does something cool, and she feels her own chest swell with love and pride. She can finally be herself.

Red Tornado comes, and Kara throws the entirety of her power supply at him and for the first time in years, she runs out.

 _She’s actually out of energy_. Sunlight that has been absorbed and utilized by her cells now has to be resupplied.

Kara didn’t even know her body could _do_ that.

Now she can’t hold on to anything. Cups slip from her hands every time she picks them up, her grip too light to hold anything. And Kara realizes that she has no normal strength. When she solar flares, she becomes Kryptonian again, but she’s been holding back for so long with her powers that she has nothing to fall back on.

Kara tells Alex this and now they have training sessions at the DEO every Saturday. At first, they’d practice in the Kryptonite chamber, but when Clark insists the DEO hand over all their Kryptonite supply, they switch to synthetic red sunlight.

It’s the most normal Kara has felt in years.

She finds herself in that room too often, cherishing the normality that comes along with it. In here, she’s not Kara Danvers, holding back the strength of a hundred, she’s not Supergirl, holding the weight of two worlds on her shoulders. In here, she’s just Kara Zor-El, a daughter of Krypton’s noble House of El: all that she ever wanted to be.

When red Kryptonite poisons her, changes her brain chemistry, and everything she’s ever thought comes to the surface, so does all her strength. Kara unleashes it all on the world.

She scares the city, she nearly kills Cat Grant and most devastating of all, she hurts Alex. Her sister, her best friend in the whole world; the one who has been with her when everyone else seemed to leave and _she hurts her_. Emotionally and physically.

Kara sobs on the medical table that night, the memories blurring together in her brain. She was so angry _but she was so strong_ , so unafraid of doing or saying anything.

And what scares her is that she wishes she could say what she truly feels, that she could touch without fear. But everything must be locked away in her head, her strength must be reeled in.

Kara can never be normal.

_She’s too dangerous to be normal._


End file.
